


Pick Yourself Up And Carry On

by icarus_chained



Category: Dungeons & Dragons - All Media Types, Original Work
Genre: Archfey, Backstory, Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, Dwarves, Fantasy, Faustian Bargain, Fighters, Gen, Half-Elves, Original Fiction, Warlocks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:55:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23410558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: Ilde needed to have a talk with her new compatriot. Dark magic she could nearly live with, but losing your head completely in a fight was another matter. Though ... honestly, the dark magic was something of a concern as well.
Comments: 16
Kudos: 67





	Pick Yourself Up And Carry On

**Author's Note:**

> A random backstory for an acolyte archfey warlock.

Ilde found the other woman sitting hunched on a fallen tree only a little way away from camp, murmuring shakily to herself and pressing a string of wooden beads one by one through trembling fingers. Praying, she’d said. Apparently, she actually was. Ah. Well.

At least she’d stayed close enough to camp? That was some evidence of sense, anyway.

Ilde hesitated to approach her. She’d always felt faintly uneasy around this sort of thing. Prayers like this. Devotion. She’d seen enough of it in her old career, over the years, the front lines being generally a good place to discover or _re_ discover faith, but she’d never gotten any easier about it. Not out of any aversion or personal lack of faith, she just … 

It was hard, for her, to imagine any god truly listening to such things. It was hard for her to imagine _bothering_ them with such things. Even the charitable ones. Maybe especially those. She hated the sensation of having wasted someone’s time.

Not that she necessarily thought Taleera was wasting anyone’s time. At least not her own. This sort of thing, Ilde had seen it before. Praying not to be heard, but to centre yourself again. To cling onto something, to whisper promises to yourself until you felt solid again. Repetition and faith. Grounding yourself back down from the thundering wilds of terror. It was the sort of thing that she imagined most of the gods ignored. It wouldn’t need an answer. The act of praying itself did most of the job.

Though judging by the amulet at the centre of the string of beads, Taleera’s god actually might be listening. Ilde caught the flash of blue-and-white as it slipped over the back of the woman’s bony, maimed hands. Lamueh. The sort of god who might genuinely pay attention.

Not enough to give the sort of magic Ilde had just seen, though. Not enough, and not the right kind. Whatever amulet the half-elf woman had been gripping during that fight, it had _not_ been the holy one.

Which was … a concern. Among several. And the reason Ilde was coming over here now.

She took care to tread heavily. She didn’t want to startle the woman. Maybe she might have, before, but the fight had more than proven why it would have been a very, very bad idea. Taleera stiffened in her seat. Her shoulders hunched further, almost up to her ears, and her fingers faltered on the beads. Her murmurs faded away, and she clutched the strand white-knuckled in both hands. Ducking her head. Angling it out of Ilde’s way, even as she came around in front of the woman. There were tear-tracks down her cheeks. Ilde winced at the sight of them. Oh, this was not going to be easy, or pleasant. But few things were, and that didn’t mean it didn’t have to be done.

She sighed heavily. Scrubbed a hand through her hair. And found a handy rock to lower herself down onto.

“Are you hurt?” she opened with. Both to ease them into things, and because it was an actual concern. “You rushed off before anyone could really check, and I’m fairly sure you took at least one nasty hit out there. You’re not going to bleed out on us, are you?”

She wasn’t sure the other woman would answer for a second. Taleera closed her eyes, white-lipped, tugging her beads in close against her chest. The picture of a woman who didn’t want to be talking right now. But then, after a second, she shook her head, and murmured in a low, raw voice:

“I’m all right. I’m trained—I have some training. Medicine. Enough to know. I’ll be all right.”

Ilde raised an eyebrow sceptically. Oh, not at the training. Brown robes and an amulet to Lamueh. A lay sister, not a priest, but medical training still made sense. Plus the hands. The missing fingers pointed to some experience of healing, at least on the receiving end. No. Her question was whether the woman was steady enough to _remember_ any training. She’d been damn near catatonic coming out of that fight, to say nothing of how she’d been _in_ it. If she’d been put together enough to do anything past sit shaking and pray, Ilde was going to be very surprised. 

But now wasn’t the time to push any physical issues. Hopefully, she’d get the woman to loosen up enough to confess _before_ she bled out.

“Medical training,” she said lightly, in that cause. “That’s a handy thing to have, right enough. Are you from one of the hospitals, then?”

This didn’t have the effect she’d hoped. Taleera didn’t relax. If anything, she hunched more.

She answered, though. Thinly and unsteadily, but she did. “Almshouse,” she corrected softly. Forcing her hands down into her lap, forcing her fingers to loosen around the beads. “Though we were connected to the hospice. So we had to … In case we were needed. We had to train.”

There was … There’d been a flash of something there. Pride. Steel. Something more than blind panic or shame, anyway. It had been important to her. The training, or the chance of being needed. That was something to work with. 

“It’s good work,” Ilde agreed. Entirely honestly. She had always admired the ministering orders. They went out and _did_ something. She preferred more decisive work herself, stopping the problem itself rather than alleviating its consequences, but at least they were out there doing the work. It was more than she could say for many organisations. “Gods know I’ve been in enough hospital beds myself, though they were usually in tents. You were good at it, were you?”

Taleera laughed. Not a _good_ laugh. A cracked little sob of a thing. But there was some humour in her eyes when she looked up. And she did look _up_. So that was hopeful too.

“I was dreadful,” she whispered, turning her beads in her hands. “Or, not dreadful. I could do the job. I wasn’t _good_ at it, though. Not the way some of us were. I don’t quite have the knack for bodies. I’m good at … talking. Arranging things. They put me in the almshouse. Sometimes, some people, richer people, they need … persuading. To help people beyond themselves. I was good at that. The Order tries to put people where they’ll do the most good. So they put me there.”

Ilde’s eyebrow bumped up again. She wouldn’t entirely have expected that. The woman didn’t seem to have the sort of confidence needed for it. Ilde had been on recruiting tours. Getting money and/or troops out of recalcitrant nobles could be a job and a half, and the officers who tended to be good at it came across more … solidly than Taleera usually seemed to.

Then again, it was looking like Taleera had a good few reasons to be less solid than usual right now.

“… Bit of a change, then,” she noted quietly. Gently, for all that the other woman still flinched. “From that to this. Was it your Order who sent you out here? Because, not to put too fine a point on it, but you’re _not_ good at this. Or not this part of it. You came within inches of dying out there. I’m not sure this is the sort of job you want to be doing.”

People did need training to fight. And _aptitude_. You couldn’t just slap some leather armour on someone, give them a sword and point them in the right direction. Or, well. You _could_. A lot of armies and militias _did_. And when they did, they got things like this. People who froze in fear, and lost their head, and leapt in blind terror out into the middle of the fight. Throwing whatever they had at the enemy in a blind panic, and coming within inches of getting their head bashed in as a consequence.

Granted, most poor drafted farmers Ilde had seen on various battlefields hadn’t been able to throw out horrifying blue-black beams of force at people. That was … a useful talent. Sure.

Not enough to balance the rest, though. Not when the woman was clearly still so petrified.

Taleera stared silently at her. Fresh tears slid silently down her cheeks. An acknowledgement, maybe. A sign that Ilde was very, very right about that. She was such a small woman. That didn’t necessarily mean anything. Ilde herself was almost a foot shorter than her. That was fine for a dwarf, though. Taleera was short for a half-elf, and frail-looking on top of it. Add in the hands, missing a finger apiece, shaking around their beads, and she looked like nothing that should be let within spitting distance of a battlefield. Even the aftermath of one.

Ilde had seen a lot of broken nerves in her time. Taleera’s looked like they’d been shattered before she’d even started. 

But there was … something else to her, wasn’t there. Some flash of a thing that wasn’t fear. Ilde saw it again now. A convulsive clutch at her beads. A grim firming of her chin. Petrified courage. Determined pride.

“It’s not,” the woman agreed softly. “It’s not a job I want to do. Or a job my Order set me. But it’s one I _have_ to do. Something I don’t have a choice in. So I’ll just … have to _get_ good at it, I suppose.” She smiled tremulously. “Somehow or other.”

Ilde grimaced. Visibly, enough that Taleera crumpled a bit again, but she couldn’t help it. That wasn’t the sort of answer she’d hoped to hear.

“… There’s no draft right now,” she said finally. Heavily. “The guilds are hiring, but they’re not drafting. Whatever you think you have to do …”

“It’s not … a matter of ‘think’,” Taleera interrupted. Firmly. One of the first signs of real firmness that Ilde had seen, and of course it would be about this. “Or a matter of a draft. At least … not a mortal one, anyway. Not a material one.”

She smiled, there. It was almost as ghastly as her magic. Ilde’s stomach sank into her boots.

“… It’s not a godly one, either,” she made herself say. Swallowing against the implication. “I saw you out there. That thing in your hand was not a holy amulet. And I don’t think that magic was holy either. Was it.”

Taleera’s smile went fixed. Went gaping. She looked away. Swung her head out to the side and closed her eyes. But she nodded without a pause. She admitted it freely.

“Not holy, no,” she whispered, tired and raw. “Easy to guess, I suppose. Nothing godly at all.”

Ilde took a breath. Slow and steadying. And set her shoulders.

“Is it a curse, then? Or did you … have a moment of weakness? Once upon a time?”

It wouldn’t be the first she’d seen. The first panicked soldier trying to make dark bargains out of raw desperation. The first old, tired soldier, selling lives out of black, exhausted amusement, a laughing need to _fit right in_ when their superiors were selling them left and right, and so often for no good apparent reason. Gods, she hadn’t thought of Harrick in years. She’d hoped to put him behind her. A bad dream, just another horror of the Blessed Campaign.

But nightmares always came back, didn’t they. Bad dreams were never allowed to rest.

Taleera shook her head, though. Clutched her beads with all the desperation of a drowning woman, clung blindly to some remnant of faith and hope of salvation, but she hadn’t …

To Ilde’s knowledge, she hadn’t lied yet. Or failed to admit fault.

“I didn’t …” she rasped roughly. “It wasn’t weakness. Not that sort. Though … maybe a curse. I was stupid. I said something I shouldn’t. _Challenged_ something I shouldn’t. But it needed to be done, too. By someone better than me, maybe, but I was there, and I did it. So now I just … have to deal with that. Have to do the needful. Until it’s done.”

Her voice quavered, a vast pit of bleakness opening under it. Her maimed hands shook. But they held firm around her faith, and her jaw was set tight.

And honestly, that wasn’t … entirely a sentiment Ilde disapproved of. Doing what needed to be done. She’d like to know the _specifics_ , mind you, she’d like to know what _exactly_ the woman considered needful, in light of the shape of her magic, but on its own the sentiment … wasn’t a bad one. Necessarily.

_Hopefully_. Dark powers allowing.

She set her own jaw. Firmed her own nerve. And asked.

“What happened, then? What needs doing?”

Taleera swallowed. Pressed a few beads over the ridge of her finger with her thumb. But she seemed to feel that Ilde was owed an answer. Or maybe she just wanted to finally talk about it.

“There was … a spate of sickness,” she started slowly. “At the almshouse. The almshouse specifically, not the hospice, though they wound up there quickly enough. The poor, at the start, coming for aid. Then some of the novices. It was … It wasn’t normal. The sickness. It didn’t act normally. They’d talk of dreams. Losing hours. And then they’d … fall asleep. Just fall asleep, and not wake up, for several days. Dreaming. Thrashing, some of them. Bleeding. Some of them died, still asleep. And others … they woke up. Sort of. Vacant. Empty. And some of them … would be maimed. Their hands, specifically. They’d wake up missing fingers.”

She glanced up, a quick flick of her eyes, and noted Ilde’s gaze sliding down to her hands. Thin and bony around the beads. The empty spaces at the ends, where the smallest fingers should be. That tremulous smile appeared again.

“It was clearly magical,” she said, into Ilde’s silence. “The wounds didn’t bleed; the fingers were just gone. The sleep was magical too. Some _thing_ , some being, had clearly cursed them. It … It made me angry. It shouldn’t have. I was so stupid. But it made me _angry_. A house of Lamueh. To do a thing like this in a house of Lamueh, a house of _healing_ , of _aid_. I was livid. And … rash. The house mother had sent for a cleric. I should have waited. But I didn’t.”

Ilde closed her eyes. Almost smiled, rueful and sad. _That_ was more like a recruiting officer. A good one, anyway. Pride. They didn’t like to be thwarted. And they didn’t like other people to take their things. That was _their_ job, and they generally didn’t like it turned on them.

“I thought it was listening,” Taleera said, rueful in her turn. “In the sickrooms. The ones where they were still alive. I thought it must be listening. So, I told it to come for me. I told it to try _me_ on for size. And somehow I was still surprised when it did.”

Ilde laughed. Not mockingly. She thought the other woman understood. “Don’t look to the heavens,” she quoted softly. Taleera smiled crookedly.

“When you should be looking at your feet,” she finished. “Yes. Exactly like that. My mother always said I was stupid when my pride was prickled. She wasn’t wrong.”

Ilde snorted. “You wouldn’t be the only one,” she said, and not without a touch of self-knowing.

She’d been a young officer once too. And she’d challenged a few things she shouldn’t as well.

Taleera smiled at her. Properly, gratefully. It made her look oddly older. Stronger. But it slipped quickly enough. Faded away, as she gathered herself again. For the worst of it, the mistake she’d made. The thing that had shattered her nerves. 

“She … calls herself the Lady of Fingers. The thing. She pulled me into a dream. I fell asleep, like the others, and I woke in her dream. She wanted … She plays games. Games of risk. Like … gambling. But for lives. The others … lost, I think. Or played wrong. I’m not sure. There was a board, a game board. Bodies. I don’t know if they were real or just … set dressing? There were skeletons, anyway. The idea was to play your way across. If you won, she would let you go. But I’m not … I’m not good at games. None of the others had won. And I was angry. Afraid, but angry. She’d come to my house. I told her ‘no’. She … didn’t like that.”

Ilde passed a hand across her face. Not surprised. Not in the slightest.

Taleera grimaced too, but soldiered grimly on. “I didn’t … fully refuse. I knew that was suicide. But I said no to the game _there_. In her place. Because … she wanted risk, she said. It was supposed to be a game of risk. She controlled everything there. So it wasn’t _real_ risk. Not for her. She knew how everything would turn out, because she could make it turn out that way. So I said … wouldn’t it be better somewhere else? More … interesting. If I took risks somewhere she couldn’t control the outcome, not fully. That way she … would be gambling as well.” 

Ilde looked at her. Just stared steadily, in the sort of dismay you only got when they showed you a wound it was already too late to fix. Gods knew she had enough experience of that. Taleera tried to smile at her. That flash of rueful pride again.

“I’m not sensible when I’m angry,” she admitted quietly. “Or when I’m afraid either. It’s different when I can talk my way out, or try to, but … maybe not better. But she didn’t … She agreed. She agreed to that bargain. A game of risk. Out here, out where she doesn’t control the game. I play for her. I do things I’m afraid to do. She gives me magic. To make it interesting. And she doesn’t … take anyone else. While I’m playing for her. She doesn’t hurt anyone else.”

… She doesn’t hurt anyone else. Of course. Which was where the ‘ _have to_ ’ came in. Which was why you did a job you didn’t want to do. Because it was needful.

Ilde curled a hand into a careful fist. Looked down at the ground beyond her knees. 

“… Does it have to be a fight?” she asked quietly. “Does it have to be a quest? There’s all sorts of risks out there. You could try gambling. It would have a certain thematic resonance, at least.”

Taleera laughed. A light, cracked thing. 

“I think the skeletons were a hint otherwise,” she said tiredly. “Though I suppose she didn’t actually say. Maybe it would work. Maybe I could just badmouth nobles and see what came of it. That would … fit too. Thematically.” She grinned again, grim and ghastly. And then let it fade. “But no. I didn’t … I chose this. Not her. She didn’t say anything about what risks she _wanted_ me to take. She’s my master, but she’s not my god. That’s Lamueh, and Lamueh is a goddess of good things. A god of healing, and caring, and serving others. I want to do … I want to do _good_ with this. For her sake. Some little bit, even I only last just long enough to start it. If I have to take risks, I want them to serve something, and not some _stupid_ game of a thing that crawls into people’s dreams and hurts them. I want—I _want_ —”

“I know,” Ilde cut her off. Not gently. Too tiredly to be gentle. But with some compassion nonetheless. She did know. The worst of the Blessed Campaign on, she knew all too well. Remembered, every moment of every day. It had to be for something. When you had to do it anyway, it had to be for _something_. Otherwise, what the Pit was the point?

Taleera blinked at her. Studied her, now. Seeing something. Some of that. She blinked, and softened some more.

“She didn’t give me good magic,” she explained. Earnestly. Almost desperately. “Or … not magic I can use to heal people. Not yet. It’s all … It’s good for fighting, or charming, or running. I don’t want to charm people like that. Twist them. And it’s not … I don’t know if it’s risky the way she wants it either. I think it has to be fighting. And if it has to be fighting, I want it to be fighting to _protect_ people. I want – I want it to do something good.”

Ilde … sighed. Sagged with all the exhaustion of nearly a hundred years of fighting. In a good cause, at first, and then because there was no way out but through, because it needed to be done, and she was one of the few still alive to do it.

“You’re going to need to get better, then,” she sighed, scraping a palm down her face. “A _lot_ better. Frankly I’ve no idea how you made it past the guild’s entrance standards as it is.”

Taleera looked down, there. Rubbed her cheek. “Well, I’m … I said I was good at talking to people?”

She grinned queasily. Ilde glared flatly at her. 

“ _Naturally_ ,” she growled. And then jabbed her thumb over one shoulder. Pointing roughly southwest-ish. Towards a battlefield. A small one, certainly compared to most she’d seen, but more than enough to have killed someone. Someone new, and inexperienced, and with their nerves shot before they ever started. “I trust you realise now why that _wasn’t a good plan_?”

Taleera grimaced, and ducked her head in acknowledgement. Genuine acknowledgement. She capitulated fully. 

“I know,” she said quietly. “I … I’m sorry. For getting Brem hurt. I’m sorry about that.”

Ilde grunted. And then unbent a little herself. “Brem did some of that himself. He’s not the most cautious in a fight either. But you did put him in place to be hurt. You do need to think about this. If you can’t master your fear, you’re going to get killed, and it’s going to be a very short game on your … your patron’s part.”

Patron. Not ‘mistress’. Ilde couldn’t bring herself to say that word. Taleera flinched anyway. Sagged, a little, that bleakness coming back to her again.

“I think it’s going to be short anyway,” she admitted. Almost calmly. “None of the others won. I don’t think I’m going to either. It’s … It’s just a matter of how much I get done before I lose.”

Ilde … blinked at her. And then _growled_. Stood up and stomped over and lifted, _gently_ , the woman’s arm into the air. Ignoring the flinch, and the flare of terror in her eyes. She raised up the maimed hand. The beads, and the blue-and-white symbol at the heart of them.

Faith had never done much for her personally. But this woman had pride in her house.

“Of course you’re not going to win if you’re not going to _try_ ,” she growled. “No one wins when they’re too scared to fight. But this thing came into your _house_. She spat on your god and everything she works for. You stood up to her once for that. It was stupid, but you did it. It’s too damned late to stop now. You might as well fight all the way.”

Taleera stared wildly up at her. Wild with fear. That same blind, panicked look she’d had in the fight. The calm was a veneer. Maybe the courage as well. Underneath it, she was _terrified_. Her nerves shattered from the off, and only a there-and-gone-again flash of pride to give the lie.

They were the worst sort to put on a battlefield. They broke, and broke messily, or at the very best just curled up and died.

But she was what Ilde had to work with. She’d been drafted. They’d just have to make the best of it.

And she reached up, after a second. That there-again flash of belligerence. A look of despair, and stubbornness, and raw pugnaciousness in her eyes.

She didn’t reach for Ilde’s hand. Didn’t try to take it off her arm. She reached for her neck instead. Pulled something up from beneath her robes. A small dark pouch on a leather thong. The thing she’d been clutching during the fight. The thing she’d grabbed hold of to make ghostly frost crawl across her and shield her from harm. And hurt, too, whoever tried to hurt her.

Ilde felt a flash of wariness flood through her. A flash of dark glee and a glimmer of her own pugnaciousness too. But Taleera didn’t try to attack her.

She tugged her arm free, now. Tugged her hand away, set her beads down in her lap. So they wouldn’t be forced to share space, Ilde thought a moment later. So they wouldn’t be touched by the objects she tipped out of that pouch to rest in her palm.

Innocuous, at first. So harmless-looking. Just a pair of dice. A pair of _bone_ dice. Specifically.

Very small ones. Made from very small bones.

Taleera looked down at them, and then up at her. She started to tip her hand to show them better, and then stopped, to grasp at them, when the void of her missing finger threatened to let them slip out. Ilde froze too, her hand half-out to try and catch them, as a … potential implication presented itself to her. As she started to get an idea of where the woman might be going with this.

Taleera tried to smile at her. That creaking, ghastly smile.

“They’re mine,” she whispered. Blackly knowing, bouncing them slightly in her palm. “She made them for me. I watched her do it. A … A symbol of our pact. Risk, and bone. Dice. They channel her magic for me. And … _remind_ me. Skeletons. People don’t win. Not against the Lady of _Fingers_.”

Ilde’s stomach lurched. In a way it hadn’t done since Harrick. She wanted to slap the grisly little things out of the woman’s palm. Slap them away from her, and crush them into dust. But it was already too late to fix that wound. At least that way.

It was a good reason, at least. A fair reason to be terrified of someone. _I watched her do it_. Watched her what? Cut the fingers off? Boil the flesh from them? Carve eldritch magic into the bones? Make a pretty little pouch to give them _back_ in? Holy gods. All gods of grace and goodness. Have mercy, for _pity’s sake_.

But in the eventuality that they didn’t. Wouldn’t, couldn’t. In the event that faith did nothing. Stubbornness and action would just have to do.

“… They don’t win against her _there_ ,” she said. Swallowing thickly around the rage and revulsion. “You said that. She controls everything there. But you made it a different game. You brought it _here_. So there’s risk both ways, now. There is a _chance_. You did that. Pride and anger did that. You’re not smart when you’re angry. You’re not remotely sensible. But I’m guessing you’re a lot more effective than when you’re scared.”

Taleera stared up at her. Breathed out, a sound that was almost a laugh.

“It shouldn’t be pride,” she managed. Smiling lopsidedly. “We’re supposed to be humble. To help and heal. It’s supposed to be about serving, not winning.”

Ilde breathed too. Settled herself, tried to pull herself back inside her skin. She felt a wave of exhaustion suddenly. A light-headed, familiar sensation. This was why she’d _left_ the army. This was why she’d gone freelance. Trying to avoid this. The vast helplessness of causes so much bigger than yourself. No. None of that. Pick different fights. Pick _smaller_ fights. Stay alive.

But if the job needed doing, it needed doing. And she knew how to do it too.

“Then let it be about both,” she said. Tiredly, but determinedly. “The way you’re already trying to. Let it be both, let it be either, let it be whatever gets your ass back off the ground. Learn how to fight. Swear to me, in Lamueh’s name, in the name of your god, that you will learn how to fight. And then we will get up, and we will show her some risks, and we will do some good, and one way or another we will win this game, or we will die trying.”

Taleera blinked at her. Trembling. All over again. Her maimed hand curled around her bones. Her other hand clutched for her beads. But she looked at Ilde. Just her.

“… We?” she asked. So hesitantly. “We?”

Ilde brought her head up. Looked away, out over the woods. A muscle ticked in her jaw. A hundred memories in her chest. She’d been trying to avoid this. Trying to get away from it. But honestly, if she’d _really_ been trying, she would have become a _farmer_. Not a mercenary. Past a certain point, there wasn’t a lot of point in lying to yourself any longer.

She looked down again. Gathered the woman’s hand, with its grisly little cargo, safely into hers. Ignoring the flinch, and the trailing look of something like hope. She sighed, and squeezed the hand gently.

“For gods’ sake, girl,” she sighed. “For _Lamueh’s_ sake. Do you really think you’re safe to be let out alone?”


End file.
